Tombstone Tuesday - 5 January 2010 - Rising from the dead

It's Tombstone Tuesday & I want to share an experience rather than a stone.

On January 3 I received an email from a woman who told me about an error in something I'd posted. She was so excited about contacting me that she didn't even notice I'd emailed her back when she picked up the phone & called me from Illinois. It seems that she is a cousin to my 2nd cousin, once removed, whose stone I posted back in June. Elaine Strauss Hill's aunt (her father's sister) had had a daughter, Joan (Elaine's cousin), and that was the person who contacted me after finding my Tombstone Tuesday about Elaine (to whom I am related on her mother's side). My error had been that I had listed her husband as having died (information received from the cemetery) . . . apparently that is very wrong as he is still very much alive (please, Mr. Hill, forgive me . . . I only know the information I am given and the records from the cemetery office are very hard to decipher so I am not sure just where the error occurred - their info or my interpretation . . . but there was even a burial date I picked up from somewhere!!). Note: I have corrected that TT entry to put Mr. Hill back among the living!

Anyway, once we straightened out who is alive & who is not, Joan & I continued to share notes. She knew all of my relatives on that side of the family as they lived close by and she & Elaine were together a great deal so when Elaine's mother's family members were over, Joan got to know them. She knew my dad's cousin was always called "Uncle Bill" (Dad always called him Wilbur and I had never heard him referred to as Bill). She knew that Bill's sister had died in an asylum (one of the lesser known pieces of family trivia). Joan knew my Dad's aunt and that she had come out to California and said she had been in the San Francisco earthquake (I later realized that was impossible as she did not move to CA until after 1912 . . . must be another quake . . . I'll have to check that out).

Then I told her about a family cousin who immigrated from Germany and became a china painter. She gasped. I said, "I suspect you have some of that china?" (It seems everyone remotely related to the family got some of the hand painted china of Carl Hohn.) Well, she told me about a pin (she turned into a pendant) that Elaine had given her - a fine porcelain with a hand-painted flower; also of a salt & pepper shaker set she has (what she described is identical to the ones - I have about 13 sets - in my china cupboard). Carl did like to paint salt & pepper shakers! She was thrilled to learn of their provenance.

Joan is not my cousin, but we connected on many levels via mutual relatives. She told me about Elaine (whom I met only a handful of times when I was very young): Elaine was a fun-loving member of the red hat society; she was always ready to have a good time. She and her husband were devoted to each other. These are the things that help us to know our deceased family members & I am very grateful for Joan's reaching out to me to correct that one little item; from that, I got to know family that I grew up less than 25 miles from but never really knew! Joan also had addresses and information on my cousins whom I have been trying to identify and locate.

Why do I put this into "Tombstone Tuesday"? Well, I started "doing" TT because it sounded like fun. I decided to try to put up photos of stones of people who died or were buried very close to an anniversary date of the posting (that's been quite the challenge, let me tell you!). Anyway, it was because Joan was doing what she (and many of us) sometimes did: Google a friend or family member, just to make sure there's nothing negative out there on the web. Low and behold, a link to my TT posting came up for "Elaine Hill." And more of my pedigree is getting filled in (and erased, as need be) as a result. So, when you other Geneabloggers post your TT (and other blogs for Wednesday, Thursday, etc.), don't forget the labels for the post! Who knows who is searching for your ancestors and just might send you an email, too.

What a great way to start 2010!!

Countdown to Mesa, AZ Expo, 22-23 Jan 2010, RootsMagic

Anyone who knows my love of genealogy knows I also love RootsMagic. There are a number of reasons for this; let me give you some of them:
1) Intensely user friendly (esp. good for a non-techy like me)
2) Ease in putting into a format where I can manipulate it (for me: Word)
3) Ease in making a copy for a family member or to use for another purpose (drag and drop!)
4) Easily editable "place" names (so cool!)
5) Compatibility with New FamilySearch (oh, double cool!!)
6) Amazing support from its CEO, Bruce Buzbee (that's triple cool!!!)

While RM does many things other genealogy software does, it is those things above, and more, that make it my software of choice. Perhaps it is just what you have been looking for ... to check that out, Bruce will make it easy for everyone attending the Family History Expo in Mesa, AZ on the 22nd & 23rd of January. He will be at booths #44-47 (where he also will have available other software from the RootsMagic developers) and will also be conducting some presentations on using this amazing software. Click the icon below to see the RM website:

Music in 2010 - Y'all come join in!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

What an exciting time . . . a whole year ahead of us with not a single day used up yet.

This is the time that resolutions are made. I have never been one for resolutions, however. I figure that if I see a change that needs to be made, the best time to do it is now. Of course, there are certain things I schedule (but I'm always scheduling something). And there are some things I'd like to see completed before the end of the year.

In 2010, I'd like to see my CD of "Songs of Early Childhood" (songs of our ancestors from when they were children) completed. And it would be nice also to do the CD of my original songs (well, I will need to write at least two more songs to accomplish that).

On January 16 the Riverside Folk Song Society will celebrate 50 years of making music together! If you live in or near Riverside, or will be visiting the area on that weekend, consider yourself invited. To download the flyer, go to our webpage. Some of our original members will be on hand to share photos and memories of the past 50 years. The group has gone through a lot of changes over the years but the purpose and basic process has remained the same: to share our love of music and learn from each other. Email me if you are interested in joining us.

I am looking forward to an exciting year where I will be playing music for the NGS conference in Salt Lake in April/May and at the Family History Jamboree in Burbank in June, presenting songs for the Kids' Camp at each event. I am hoping that I may get to be known a bit more in the genealogical community as the folksinging genealogist!

Circlemending will also have booths at the Family History Expos in Mesa, AZ (January) and St. George, UT (February) (and probably at the ones in Sandy, UT in July and Alameda County, CA in October), and at the Family History seminar in Escondido, CA (March). We'll also be doing some performing and workshops at the Glendale (AZ) Folk and Heritage Fair in March and probably the folk festival in Flagstaff, AZ in June. We hope to remind folks at all these events that the act of singing together as families, in choirs, and in school used to be the way people entertained themselves. Among my musician friends, it's still how we spend evenings, days, or entire weekends. There is a sense of connection to one another when you share a song together.

So make that New Year's resolution to share some music with friends and/or loved ones. Come join us! There's always room for one more to sing, play, or just listen!

(To hear some of my philosophies of how music and ancestry connect, check out my Podcast with Susan E. King - scroll down to the Nov. 10 broadcast.)